for him,
Thane began. "At this moment," he started, "the Darzent Empire is
preparing an attack. They have a space-drive, stolen from the Allied
Systems, which allows almost instantaneous travel through the Galaxy.
You will learn of this drive, and you will learn something that
Darzent does not know. You will learn how to locate any ship using
this drive at any time the drive is in operation."

That was enough to stimulate Candar's driving, paranoid megalomania to
the full. Thane had already threatened him with destruction. Now he
held out to him the opportunity to be master of the Galaxy. Thane felt
it would be simple now to obtain the transfer of Astrid to the custody
of the church. He thought so, but there was another hour of argument
before he had overcome Candar's suspicions and convinced him of the
absolute necessity of having Astrid to supervise the building of the
Tracer and the Drive.

At last it was settled. Then Thane committed his treason. He told all
he knew, about the second-stage drive and the tracer, and when Astrid
came in, she finished the job. Between them they gave away the most
important secrets of the Galaxy to an enemy, a man of endless,
pathologic ambition.

* * * * *

Candar, of course, wanted confirmation. It was fast in coming. With
all the technical resources of Onzar at her disposal, Astrid had a
prototype of the tracer in operation the following day. An hour later
the existence of a ship using the catalyst drive was reported by the
tracer. Its position could not be determined until a base line had
been established. The following day, three more tracers were set up at
widely separated points across the planet. More movement of ships was
reported--and they were definitely placed within the Darzent Empire.
One more day passed, and more tracers had been set up on Onzar III,
across the sun from the capitol planet.

At the same time, Candar pushed work on the second-stage drive with
all possible speed. As Thane had guessed, the use of gold in the
catalyst principle gave Candar pause, but only momentarily. It was
true that such a use of gold violated one of the oldest and strongest
taboos in the religion but Candar's hunger for power was stronger than
his fear of revolt. As Thane had supposed, Candar went ahead with the
development of the drive, thinking that when he had it his power would
enable him to ignore the church. The church was powerful on just this
sy